The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. negotiators had offered to cut existing tariffs by as much as half on $360 billion of Chinese-made products, and said tariffs set to take effect Sunday would be canceled.
Bloomberg News followed with a similar report soon after, signaling that negotiators had reached the terms of a phase-one pact, but noted that Trump still had to sign off on it.
The U.S. side has demanded that Beijing make firm commitments to purchase large quantities of U.S. agricultural and other products, the Journal said.
Hello China again. Well who knows. But if there is one person I believe strongly its Michael Pillsbury. That guy knows China like nobody else and he says this time its real. Market has gone from testing low side to a gap and go...we will see
The biggest guessing game in town
The market looks like a pretzel as it goes up and down
As one person said it could be a blank piece of paper
One thing is for real
Some tarrifs have been removed and others not implemented
Last I heard Trump just poured cold water on the deal
Why would he do that??
Stks tanked
We know china economy is not performing and the PBOC is not bailing out the losers this time
Why would they do that???
Trump will eventually make a deal because he wants to get re elected.
No deal will potentially cost him millions of votes and at the very least, be the difference between the dem person pointing it out in the debates as him messing up or him bragging about his great deal with China.
Trump has control over this.
Which one do you think he will choose?
Easy choice ehh?
WASHINGTON, Dec 13 (Reuters) - China has agreed to buy $200 billion worth of additional U.S. goods and services over the next two years as part of a phase one trade pact to be signed in early January, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told reporters on Friday.
As part of the agreement, Beijing committed to buy an additional $32 billion American agricultural products over two years, or roughly $16 billion a year more than the 2017 baseline of $24 billion, Lighthizer told reporters. He said Beijing would aim for another $5 billion in farm purchases each year on top of that.
He insisted the trade agreement was compliant with World Trade Organization rules, adding that China would be free to buy things when “it’s the perfect time in the market to buy things.”
Asked about what happened between Oct. 11 and now, Lighthizer said that time was spent on getting to specifics on the language of the agreement. Those discussions continued until Friday morning, he said, noting that he got the final go-ahead from the president just after 10 a.m.
"It was extremely momentous and indicative of where we're going, what this president has accomplished," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told "Face the Nation."Dec 15, 2019
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-china-trade-deal-heres-whats-in-the-us-china-phase-one-trade-deal/
The Trump administration's "Phase One" trade deal with China is expected to cool, if not definitively end, a heated dispute between the world's two largest economies that has raised costs for U.S. companies, hurt American farmers and roiled global financial markets.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Sunday told CBS News' Margaret Brennan on "Face The Nation" that the China agreement, coupled with the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement, amounts to "probably the most momentous day in trade history ever." But experts are striking a more cautious tone in assessing the longer-term impact.
"We need to see the final text to truly know the deal," Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist for High Frequency Economics, told investors in a report. Here's what we know about the preliminary trade pact between the U.S. and China.
Of the roughly $500 billion in goods the U.S. imports from China every year, some $370 billion are currently subject to tariffs.
Last week's deal averts further U.S. levies on an additional $160 billion in Chinese imports that were set to take effect on Sunday — a relief for companies that pay the import tax. It also means American consumers are unlikely to see price hikes for a swath of consumer goods including mobile phones, video game consoles and computer monitors — at least for now.
U.S. tariffs on another group of Chinese-made consumer products that took effect Sept. 1 also will be cut to 7.5% from 15%, according to a USTR fact sheet.
China agreed to purchase up to $200 billion in U.S. goods, including agricultural products like soybeans and pork initially touted when the agreement was first announced in October. That's expected to benefit American farmers, who have seen China greatly reduce their agricultural purchases from the U.S. during the trade war.
"China went from the second-largest market for U.S. agricultural products to the fifth-largest since the trade war began," Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a statement Friday, adding that American farmers were "eager to learn details of China's commitment."
Less clear: Just how much in U.S. farm products China will ultimately buy.
The Trump administration has said China will purchase $40 billion a year, but experts "want to see what part of the purchase commitments China considers enforceable, not a vague promise of best efforts," Brad Sester, a senior adviser at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a tweet.
The agreement also includes measures aimed at curbing Beijing's practice of requiring U.S. companies that do business in China to share technology with their Chinese partners, according to the USTR. China had previously agreed to that when it joined the Word Trade Organization in 2001, Georgetown Law professor Jennifer Hillman, former US and WTO trade official, has noted.
But agreement doesn't seem to address a key point of contention for the U.S. — the theft of intellectual property by Chinese companies. That long-simmering issue will have to wait for future trade negotiations, Lighthizer said when pressed on Face the Nation.
"The president came up with a plan; we've been following it for two and a half years. We are right where we hope to be — tech transfer, real commitments, IP [intellectual property], real specific commitments," Lighthizer said. "I mean, this agreement is 86 pages long of detail. Agricultural barriers removed in many cases, financial services opening, currency. This is a real structural change. Is it going to solve all the problems? No. Did we expect it to? No. Absolutely not."